Little Bemidji Lake

Little Bemidji Lake sits at the top of the Minnesota PCA grading rubric with an A, a mark reached by the cleanest lakes in Minnesota. The three sub-grades — clarity, phosphorus, and chlorophyll-a — track close together, so no single parameter is dragging the average.

The lake's low TSI puts it in oligotrophic territory — the cleanest of the four trophic classes, but also the most vulnerable to nutrient-driven shifts. At 58 ft of maximum depth, Little Bemidji Lake stratifies reliably through the summer — the hypolimnion stays cooler and clearer than the surface layer suggests. Little Bemidji Lake covers 293 acres alongside 3.1 miles of shoreline — a mid-sized water that supports a working fishery without being so large that conditions diverge between basins. Little Bemidji Lake ranks 32 of 93 in Becker County — solidly in the upper half of the local distribution.

No invasive species are currently listed at Little Bemidji Lake — the lake remains off the Minnesota infested-waters roster. Walleye are documented at Little Bemidji Lake, one of 16 fish species on record for the lake. Public access is available — the lake is on the Minnesota PCA public-access list. Ice-out has been recorded 11 times at Little Bemidji Lake, with a median around Apr 14. Monitoring depth is thin here: the LakeGrade rubric is applied to a small number of sample years, and the grade will be revised as more data accumulates.